Midterm Blogging

Sam Montagna

Professor Mulready

Shakespeare II

4 April 2012

Midterm

I typically pick a character or two and focus on them. After my first post, which was too broad and focused on all the characters of Merchant of Venice, I shifted my focus to one or two characters in my other posts. Instead of posting about all the characters, I talked about Kate and Petruccio and then Richard. In my first post, I talk about what happens in the first act of Merchant of Venice and then give my opinion on it. My second and third post consisted of focusing on a character’s trait and expanding on it. For example, I talk about Kate's feisty attitude, Petruccio's arrogant attitude and Richard's weakness as a King. Since my first post, I have been trying to focus my posts on a single idea and explore it.

Typically, I write the post, edit it to my liking, post it and hope that what I came up with makes sense and invokes thought. When I reread my posts after not reading them for a while, I am surprised that I am the one who wrote them. When I begin a piece of writing, I get all my thoughts down on paper first and then make it grammatically correct. After that, I search for awkwardness and choose my words wisely. When the final product is finished, a considerable amount of work has been put into it. I tend to underestimate myself as a writer, so rereading my posts and reading the comments makes me feel like what I wrote made sense. So, after realizing that my first post was not the best, I worked towards making my posts better. In my other two posts, I noticed that I made connections from Shakespeare to something else. I compared Kate and Petruccio to a high school snob and arrogant jock. I believe this idea is worth revisiting because their relationship is so complex and can easily be transferred to today. Their relationship can be seen as unhealthy or just what the doctor ordered. It depends on the point of view. At first, I did not like the blogging and I did not know what to expect. However, I do think there are benefits to blogging. I like having to expose myself to other people's ideas about Shakespeare. Also, the blogging challenges me to explore an idea that otherwise would not have been noticed at all.